Archives

1. Minnesota Landscape Arboretum Bee Discovery Center

   The health of pollinators is in danger from pesticide use, lack of forage, destruction of nest habitats, and colony collapse disorder. Serving as the outreach arm of the University of Minnesota’s Bee and Pollinator Research Lab, this new center gives next generations an opportunity to learn about the intricate and essential world of pollinators. Located on the Red Barn Farm site at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, the center features exhibit space for telling the story of honey bees, Monarch butterflies, and other pollinators, while inviting visitors of all ages to sense the world from the vantage point of the small pollinators. A learning lab provides space for interpretation and educational activities. The design connects interior program spaces to an outdoor environment that features demonstration pollinator gardens and bee hives.

2. Haverford College Visual Culture, Arts & Media (VCAM) Building

   Haverford College’s new Visual Culture, Arts, and Media (VCAM) building repurposes a gym built in 1900 into a vibrant 21st-century learning environment. The design preserves the old gym’s central, two-story vaulted space, while inserting a three-story, object study/media production classroom and creating a new living room for the campus. All primary program spaces open onto and animate the heart of the building—a three-story remnant of an indoor running track—that now functions as campus family room with kitchen, community table, display area, projection wall, and movable furniture. Classrooms, labs, offices, and presentation spaces encourage trans-disciplinary collaboration and experimentation in digital media, film, 3D fabrication, and material culture. The project is certified LEED-NC v. 3 Gold.

3. Drexel University College of Media Arts and Design URBN Center

   The respectful repurposing of a landmark Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates (VSBA) decorated shed provides a new home for Drexel University’s College of Media Arts and Design (CoMAD). Key goals driving the project included bringing disparate CoMAD departments together in one location and encouraging cross-collaboration between disciplines. To transform the office building and annex (once a daycare center), the design concept focuses on respecting the original intent, making more with less, and providing opportunities for learning by doing.

4. Carleton College Weitz Center for Creativity

   The Weitz Center serves as a working laboratory for creativity—not only in the arts, but across the entire curriculum. It positions the college as a national leader in arts programs by creating an environment that fosters creativity, critical thinking, collaborative working skills, and cross-cultural exploration. An adaptive reuse and expansion of a former middle school complex, the center houses the departments of studio arts, dance and theater, and cinema and media studies. It incorporates classrooms, studios, a teaching museum, performance spaces, and state-of-the-art collaborative spaces.

    

    

    

5. University of Minnesota Itasca Biological Station

   Located within Minnesota’s oldest state park and at the headwaters of the Mississippi River, the new campus center contains three labs, an auditorium, and a library space. The design breaks the form of the building into three gable-roofed parts to match the scale of the existing campus buildings. Conservation strategies dramatically reduce energy needs, and a geothermal system and photovoltaic solar array on the roof offset energy used by the building with a goal of approaching net zero energy.